Patient name: unknown. Has been given the temporary name of, 'John Doe'.
Age: unknown.
Patient was found unconscious on the steps of the hospital. Patient claimed to have no memory prior to being found. Patient suffers from a unique form of dementia. Has vivid dreams of a fantasy world that he believes is real.
Further observation and medication recommended until time when more extensive evaluation can be made.
He sat up in his bed, the drab, gray wallpaper of his asylum room greeted him as the gloom of the waking world reminded him of the cold reality he lived in.
He wanted to go back to sleep, to return to the bright, sunny world that waited for him every time he closed his eyes.
A sudden click at the door to his room drew his attention to the visitor. He usually didn't like people coming to his room when he first woke up, but the attractive nurse brought a glint of sunshine to his day. She wore cyan blue nurses scrubs, which were unique from the off white that the rest of the staff wore.
But the most distinguishing feature she had, was her shoulder length rainbow colored hair that she showed off proudly.
"Good morning, Mr. Doe. How is my favorite patient today?" The pretty nurse asked him. He shook off the sorrow he felt and showed the nurse the best smile he could.
"Good morning to you too, Rainbow Dash."
The nurse smiled back at him as she strolled over to where he lay in his bed and gave him a light bonk on the head.
"John, how many times have I told you? I love the pet name, but we've talked about this. My name is Rabeca, remember?"
John gave a fake laugh like he was joking. But really he was still in his dream, where the friendly young nurse was a blue pony with wings and rainbow colored mane and tail.
"You had those dreams again, didn't you?"
John only nodded as he looked down at his lap in embarrassment. Rabeca flashed a soft smile as she sat at the edge of his bed and placed a hand on his. She had seen manny patients in her few years of working at the mental hospital. But John was a special case, he had kind, soft eyes that seemed sad. He would never talk about it, but Rabeca had seen that look before. The look of someone who was heartbroken from not having any memories, not knowing who he is.
It was an unfathomable kind of sadness, someone who has never lost there memories can't know the heartache of not knowing who they are. But Rabeca liked to think that she had a better idea of how he felt.
"Would you like to tell me about it?"
John perked up a little as the pretty nurse smiled at him. Rabeca honestly loved to hear about his dreams, stories of a world occupied by ponies of all different shapes, colors, and types. A peaceful land of rainbows and light, and the prospect of herself being a pony with wings warmed her heart.
"It's funny that I have wings in your dreams, John."
John looked at her with a bit of confusion.
"Why is it funny?"
Rabeca laughed a little before looking out the barred window.
"Well, I wanted to join the Air Force when I graduated from high school. But it just didn't work out."
"Why not, Rabeca?"
Rabeca chuckled to herself as she thought back to the time in question.
"Severe motion sickness. I can hardly ride in a car without feeling like I'm gonna hurl."
She laughed, but John could see that it made her sad, dreaming of flying over the earth but being denied because of her own afliction.
"I-I didn't know, I'm sorry Rabeca."
"There's nothing to be sorry for. I have a great job where I get to make friends like you, Johnny boy."
John looked back down at his lap again.
"Do you really want a nut job as a friend?"
John flinched a bit as he felt a sharp punch to his arm.
"You are not a "nut job", you just have some things you're sorting through right now, and I feel blessed to have a friend with such a nice imagination."
John put on one of his rare genuine smiles, he didn't have the guts to show it to Rabeca. So he kept his head down and looked at his lap.
"Todays a nice day, wanna come to the reck room and socialize?"
John honestly didn't want to, but he couldn't bear to make his only friend worry.
"Yeah, sure."
He and Rabeca walked to the reck room, making light conversation about the weather, current events and the like.
Rabeca went to do some paperwork in the back office while John contended himself with looking out one of the barred windows. He and the other patients were permitted to go outside twice a week for a few hours. But to John it just never felt like enough.
Instead of trying to play cards with a bunch of twitching, mumbling schizophrenics or watch some daytime talk show, he liked to look out the window.
The trees swayed and moved with the gentle breeze. Once in a while he would see a humming bird buzz by to drink from one of the beautiful flowers that grew on the grounds.
He pressed a hand to the cool glass and wished he was out there.
"Ugh!" John groaned as he felt a sudden headache hit him dead square between his eyes. He looked up from the ground out the window again.
But the lush garden had been replaced.
There was now a beautiful little town. Mountains in the distance. Quaint little houses and a shop shaped like a gingerbread house.
Outside that window, he saw Equestria.
His eyes widened as the pain in his head faded away. His heart felt like it was going to stop as he extended his hand to try and tough the world beyond.
But the glass passed the bars stopped him.
He had to get through. He had to touch that world, even if it was only a little.
He balled his fingers into a fist, and as hard as he could he slammed into the glass. The window shattered and fell to the floor with a sound that may as well have been loud as thunder.
Equestria began to vanish like a mirage when he noticed the thick, red fluids spurting from an open wound on his hand.
An alarm went off inside the formally quiet room, causing the other patients to begin panicking and running around in a frenzy.
John held his hand as he felt lightheaded and began slumping to the floor. He reached up to try and get one more chance at touching the outside world just once.
His vision was fading to black, when he felt a warm and gentle hand grasp his and squeeze it tightly.
Then all was dark.
***
"Im sorry, I know you've developed a special bond with him. But he's just to dangerous of a liability to keep here."
Rabeca slammed a hand that still had spots of dried blood on the desk.
"He is not dangerous! Your going to send him to a twenty-four hour lock up facility so he can sit in a straight jacket for the rest of his life?! How is he going to get the help he needs there?!"
After the incident in the reck room, John had been sent to the infirmary with a hand injury. The head doctor called Rabeca into his office. They had to all but pry her away from John, insisting on holding his hand until a doctor could see him.
The head of the facility told her that because of what he did that they were sending John to more strict mental hospital.
"Please calm down, Rabeca. It isn't a prison. He'll still get the help he needs, but we just don't have the resources to watch after someone with his….condition."
Rabeca felt like her heart was being tugged at, but deep down she knew that what the doc was saying was partly true. The last thing she wanted was for John to get hurt, by himself or otherwise.
"Well, what if I watch him. He'll never be out of my sight for a second."
The look on the doc's face told her that she wasn't winning ground.
"Miss. Dardell, you have been with us for almost two years, and in that time I've never seen you act so strongly toward a patient. What is so special about this one?"
Rabeca opened her mouth to talk, but found her words caught in her throat.
"I-I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm the one who found him that night. But the moment I saw him I had this unexplainable feeling like I had to be there for him. To watch over him. Be his friend."
The doc kept his professional face on, but inside he smiled warmly. It wasn't every day he saw someone so young approach this job with such warmth and compassion for people she didn't even know. Most of the employees were fine with feeding a patient a pill and locking there door to avoid dealing with them.
"The guardian angel syndrome," he said to the young woman.
"Huh?"
The doc folded his glasses and placed them on the desk before smiling up at the nurse.
"It's a very admirable trait to find in someone so young. But you need to think about John and whats best for him. Do you really think that holding him here and coddling him will help?"
Rabeca looked down at the blood on her hand, and she knew what the right answer was.
***
John slowly opened his eyes, the fluorescent lights of the ceiling blotted out by a lovely silhouette.
"Glad to see you're still with us, mr crazy."
The voice was gravely, but sweet and gentle.
He felt woozy as he tried to open his eyes more, the image of a girl with rainbow colored hair over him.
"R-Rabeca?"
"Good, you remember my name. Maybe you can tell me what you were thinking."
John tried to sit up, but was stopped by a gentle hand holding him down.
"Don't get up. The doctor said you lost a lot of blood and that you need to rest."
"I-I'm sorry, for what I did," he apologized, his voice breaking as his emotions welled up.
"Hay hay, non of that. I'm just glad that you're ok."
He sniffed back the tears that threatened to come to the surface.
"Am I in trouble?"
Rabeca felt herself pause at his question. She had intended to tell him the news about his transfer. But seeing him so physically and emotionally broken told her that it could wait.
"Of course not. I'm not happy about what you did, but things happen. No use crying over broken glass, right?"
John chuckled a bit, which made Rabeca feel better.
"I'm sorry, John. But I have to get back to work."
Johns hand quickly grasped at her wrist like a child to its parent.
"Please don't go. I don't want to be alone right now," he pleaded, feeling like the tears would return.
Rabeca placed her other hand on his. She looked at him, not with fear, but with a gentle smile.
"You're never alone when you have a good friend," she said simply.
John's grasp lightened till he let go of her. Rabeca placed a hand on his head, as if telling him to stay.
"I'll come back tomorrow. I want to talk to you more about what happened. Get some rest in the meantime, ok?"
John simply nodded. Rabeca gave his hand a little squeeze before she got up and exited the infirmary, flashing him a wink before leaving. She stood in the hallway for a few minutes as she let the tears come freely.
***
John shot up in his bed, covered in a cold sweat.
The nightmare he had was a new one.
She was in danger. Thats what he remembered most.
Big rocks falling, and she needed him to save her. If he didn't do something, if he didn't go now, something terrible would happen to her.
He tore out the iv in his arm and tried to find a way to his feet.
He was shaky from the pain killers, but he had to go, and he didn't have time to waste.
Finding a chair, he broke the lock on the door and stumbled out into the hallway.
She was there for him, she cared for him when the world turned its back. If he did nothing, then what kind of friend would he be?
His head ached, and his vision blurred.
But when it returned, the hallway was filled with floating and wafting blue feathers. Like bread crumbs leading him to where he needed to go. He knew that those beautiful feathers couldn't exist in the real world. But they were so beautiful, he felt almost hypnotized to follow them.
"I'll save you, Rainbow Dash."
***
She was wet from both the rain and the sweat from peddling her bike so fast. The message was vague, but to the point. John was in trouble, she needed to get to the roof at work as fast as possible.
Hallways, stairs, they all blurred past her as she sprinted to the stairs that led to the roof.
She turned and turned up the stair till the door to the rooftop came into view. She burst through the door, the rain and wind hitting her as she got outside, orderlies and police officers occupied the space, standing around the man who stood on the edge of the roof.
He wasn't shivering, he just stood looking over the edge of the roof.
"Rabeca, ya gotta talk him down before this gets bad," one of the orderlies told her, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Rabeca nodes once to the orderly before taking a few steps toward John. She felt fear and hesitation. Not just because her friends life was in danger, but something about his back told her to stay away.
"John?…..john," she said softly, trying to not surprise him.
"Rabeca? What are you doing here?" He asked, not turning to look at her.
"I heard that you were in some trouble. There are easier ways to get my attention than doing something like this."
She tried to hide the fear in her voice, but knew that he could tell.
"It's here. I didn't understand before, but now it all makes sense. I found it, and it's here."
Rabeca took a cautious step toward him.
"Found what, John? Come down and explain it to me," she pleaded, trying to get him to come down.
"Equestria! This is how I'm going to get there. She needs me, and I have to go."
"John, please listen! These things that your seeing and feeling, they're not real!"
He didn't move. As if her words just passed over him.
"I told her. Rainbow Dash needs me, and I have to go."
"John, there is no Equestria! I'm not Rainbow Dash! My name is Rabeca, I'm your friend, and I don't want you to get hurt!"
She began crying, full of sorrow that she had to shatter his fantasies.
John's body loosened up as he turned to look at Rabeca. He was smiling, but he looked sad as well, like the look someone shows when they have to say goodbye to someone they love.
"You're right, Rabeca. You are my friend, the best one that I'll ever have."
She smiled. The slim hope that she had gotten through to him made her happy beyond words.
"I'll see you again. You may not know it's me, but I will see you again."
He extended his arms and fell backwards, an arc of lightning cracked overhead. The last thing he saw, was her face, crying over the edge of the building.
***
"Miss. Dardell, what are you doing here? I thought you were taking some personal time." The head doctor asked the young woman currently folding sheets in an empty room.
"Oh, I can never enjoy time off. I just wanted to clean up his room," she explained with more than a hint of sadness in her voice.
"You know, no one will think less of you for staying away for a while. I know what he meant to you."
Rabeca moved a lock of rainbow hair from her face as she continued to straighten up the bedding.
"I know, I do. But, something tells me that he wouldn't want me to mope around. Besides, just being in his room makes me feel closer to him."
The doctor looked down at his charts. To often did he forget that the patients were people and not just crazies.
"I heard about what happened that night. You knew him better than anyone, what do you think he meant about all that stuff?"
Rabeca looked up and out the window. The sky was turning blue after all the rain they had received in the past week. As if to answer the doc's question, a rainbow appeared just over the trees in the distance.
"I don't know, but I think he's happier now."
*****
"Now you just pay attention, and try your best, and-"
"Seriously Fluttershy, the turtle? What did you bring that thing here for?"
"Technically, he's a tortoise, and he's always dreamed of becoming someponies pet."
Author's Note
I have done other stories where I tried to break away from clop fics, but most of them haven't fared so well. I hope that this one is a bigger success.
I almost cried as I was righting this. Hope you all feel the same way.
